MOULTRIE — There used to be a saying in the production of country music that if a fan listened to a song three times and couldn’t remember most of the lyrics, it wouldn’t sell. So it would be canned.

I thought about that the other day while attending a meeting. I don’t think there was a person there  who could pronounce “recidivism” on the first try.

Mostly, recidivism is used in conjunction with our nation’s penal system. In layman’s terms, it means, “We’ll leave the light on for you.” It’s about repeat offenders.

Now there’s been a lot of country songs that have involved incarceration, but I’ve never heard one that used the word recidivism. Merle Haggard managed to avoid that word when he recorded “Mama Tried.”

In my opinion, recidivism and many other words should have been doused a long time ago. I also would have done away with silent letters. It never made any sense to me to spell pneumonia with a silent “p” and New Jersey without. Yet, I don’t really care about pterodactyl because there’s very little reference to those creatures anymore, given that they became extinct millions of years ago, or 5,000 years ago if you are a fundamentalist. Either way, we don’t have to worry about them attacking our children and taking them off to the land of Nod.

A few weeks ago I wrote in a column that I thought there must be a sewing shop somewhere that specialized in ugly neckties. Similarly, there must have once been a committee assigned to manufacturing useless and hard- to-pronounce words.

Recently I came across a list of useless words and got a good laugh.

Did you know that there’s a word for the day before yesterday. Instead of saying Friday or two days ago one might say “nudiustertian.” I cannot confirm if this word has ever been used outside of that  committee. But I would bet the farm that it has never been used in the pool room where I get my chili dogs.

And instead of saying midnight, one might say “mesonoxian.” Probably this word has shown up at a spelling bee. And should a contestant ask for a sentence using that word, the pronouncer might say, “Meet me in the alley behind the hardware store around mesonoxian, and come alone.” Well, maybe that’s a bit extreme. Probably the pronouncer would say something like, “I get off work at mesonoxian.”

At first glance, I would have thought this word was a medical term relating to a bowel disorder — either the result of or a cure for.

If someone speaks in a loud voice, then the word of the day could be “lamprophony.” I think of the recent political races in this regard. That word might have been associated with politicians on the campaign trail.  I was drawn to that analogy because of the last syllable ... “phony.”

Try this one: “scopperloit.” It means rude or rough play.

So the referee thows a yellow flag and announces to the fans that the defense will be penalized 15 yards for scopperloiting all over the quarterback. It’s an automatic first down, and the guilty linebacker has to visit his mother-in-law four consecutive weekends.

And there’s a word for being poisoned by cheese. It’s “tyrotoxism.” So has this happened enough to require its own word? Ironically, I couldn’t find a difficult-to-pronounce word that means poisoned by arsenic. Go figure.

Like I said, these words in my opinion are totally useless. And guess what, there’s a word for the estimation that something has no value whatsoever. It’s “floccinaucinihilipilification.” And I can only imagine what the spell checker on my computer is going to do when it gets here. I’m not really expecting it to give me a synonym, unless it’s “State of the Union Address.”

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)